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by Susan Smith - Managing EditorEach AEC Weekly Review delivers to its readers news concerning the latest developments in the AEC industry, AEC product and company news, featured downloads, customer wins, and coming events, along with a selection of other articles that we feel you might find interesting. Brought to you by AECCafe.com. If we miss a story or subject that you feel deserves to be included, or you just want to suggest a future topic, please contact us! Questions? Feedback? Click here. Thank you!

Autodesk customers at no charge for the purpose of fully accessing the objects within drawing files created with the AutoCAD Architecture 2010 D-A-CH Extension. Without this object enabler installed, you can share drawings using proxy graphics representations or the Export to AutoCAD command. Find this application

AEC Factory announced it has become an authorized Autodesk value-added reseller (VAR). AEC Factory’s qualified staff demonstrates in-depth technical and industry knowledge and a commitment to customer service, and provides its customers with the world’s leading 2D and 3D digital design software solutions, as well as the highest quality training and support.

Autodesk, Inc. has announced that Turner Construction Company utilized Autodesk Navisworks Manage software as an element in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process used to complete the new Yankee Stadium project. As part of its construction management process, known as Virtual Trade Coordination (VTC), Turner used the latest BIM processes and Autodesk Revit-based products and Navisworks Manage software to help streamline workflow and collaboration among subcontractors.

e-Builder, provider of web-based capital program and project management software to North America’s largest building owner/operators and AEC firms, announced that Mark Bridgers, Consultant with FMI Corporation, will present its next executive webinar, “Inflection Point – Defining the Future of the Worldwide Construction Market,” on July 16, 2009. To register, please visit this

Grassi & Co., CPAs, one of the region's leading accounting, tax and consulting firms with the largest national construction practice, released its

2009 Construction Industry Survey results and report. This industry-wide survey, The State of Your Business 2009, was conducted in partnership with McGraw Hill Construction's New York Construction.

The survey queried construction companies in seven different information areas: organizational structure, contract types, training and technology, profitability and access to capital, financial tools, business development and future vision. The results uncovered the need for implementing best business practices that increase reliance on sophisticated business planning tools and programs that focus on ways in which to grow the business over time and rely on financial techniques to increase profitability.

New and exciting changes have been introduced to

Autodesk’s Beta Program where we invite customers to test and provide feedback on pre—release product so that we ship the highest quality of product possible.

The Autodesk MyFeedback Beta platform was retired by May 31st, 2009 at which point the new Autodesk Community officially came to life at the

daratechPLANT, the world's leading plant asset lifecycle management event, announced that it will be changing its name to "The DIGITAL PLANT Conference", and also changing its tagline to "The Plant Asset Lifecycle Event". There has been no change in the event's management or ownership. The first conference under the new name will be held March 1 - 3, 2010, at the Hilton Americas in Houston.

Avatech Solutions Inc. cut another 41 people from its work force Friday.

The layoffs follow a 10 percent reduction in employees in April, when Avatech had about 200 workers. Now it has 146, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The company is reacting to drops in revenue as demand falls for its software, which is used by design, engineering and facilities management firms. Avatech lost $146,000 in the first quarter of 2009 after revenue fell 37 percent to $8 million.

Meridian Systems, the Plan-Build-Operate (PBO) technology solutions leader for project-based organizations, has honored the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department (WASD) with an induction into the 2009 Meridian Systems Hall of Fame.

Autodesk has become the latest vendor to launch a finance programme for UK end users.

Autodesk Finance, which is being rolled out by leasing outfit Syscap, will provide finance for the full range of the CAD software vendor’s 80 products.

It is Autodesk’s first UK finance programme. Syscap said the availability of leasing finance would help boost sales among Autodesk’s manufacturing and engineering client base.

The

Open Design Alliance (ODA) announced advancements in their Quality Assurance team, including a newly hired QA Manager and QA Support Systems Engineer. In addition to a growing team, the QA Department will also see hardware upgrades and new server installations for the ODA automated test systems.

Expansions in quality assurance have enabled the ODA to further advance the reliability of existing products and move forward more quickly with the upcoming 3.0 platform release, which will include support for 2010 DWG files.

Aftercad Software is pleased to announce the Beta signup for its ground breaking 3D Workspace for collaboration in Digital Prototyping and Building Information Modeling (BIM) projects.

The Aftercad 3D Workspace is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that allows businesses to upload, view, mark-up, manage and publish large and complex 3D CAD files onto the web, without the need for proprietary viewers, providing easy and instant access to 3D project information by non-CAD professionals.

New Products

The

AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 Object Enabler is a free of charge application that you can use to display AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 image files. This release allows object data created in AutoCAD Raster Design 2010 to be accessed outside the AutoCAD Raster Design environment.

This software is subject to the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA) available during installation.

Two brand new products have teamed up to revolutionize the way people buy homes and real estate agents sell them.

Transforming Architecture is launching a new concept, VISIONSELL, a product for architects that will facilitate real estate sales by helping buyers visualize how they can turn an "ugly duckling bargain" into their dream home with the help of bonzai3d. Bonzai3d is the software of choice for VISIONSELL to engage architects with homebuyers. Side by side, the architect can offer design solutions that prospective buyers can see immediately. These ideas may include an addition, floor plan alteration, or even raising the roof. The architect helps clients visualize the changes and obtain the necessary information to make an educated buying decision.

AutoDWG, developer of AutoCAD related tools, has announced a new release of PDFIn PDF to DWG Importer, which is the latest version of its AutoCAD plug-in.

As AutoCAD 2010 is published since March and many users have updated their AutoCAD to the latest 2010 version, AutoDWG recently made great efforts to upgrade PDFIn PDF to DWG plug-in for this new version of AutoCAD. AutoDWG PDFIn can be installed on all versions of 32bit full AutoCAD now.

AutoDWG PDFIn PDF to DWG Importer is a powerful plug-in for AutoCAD users. It can import all formats of PDF documents into AutoCAD and let users directly view and save the output as DWG or DXF with AutoCAD. With this easy-to-use AutoDWG plugin, users can get entities in the PDF, with lines and texts preserved and the output drawing looks just as perfect as it was in the PDF.

Silver Peak Systems, a leader in scalable Wide Area Network (WAN) acceleration, announced that Autodesk, a world leader in 2D and 3D design and engineering software, has deployed Silver Peak globally as a strategic platform for WAN acceleration. Autodesk is using Silver Peak's NX appliances to overcome WAN performance challenges that hamper the performance of key business applications, and to provide detailed visibility into application behavior across the WAN. In doing so, the company has reduced operational costs and increased employee productivity, resulting in a faster, more efficient software development process.

Mentor Graphics Corp. announced that the Catapult C Synthesis tool has been extended to support control logic and manage low power design requirements, thus enabling full-chip high-level synthesis (HLS). This breakthrough technology allows designers to use pure ANSI C++ for both algorithmic blocks and control logic blocks. Extending the Catapult C tool’s capabilities to full-chip high-level synthesis is critical due to the rapid growth in design size and complexity, which requires engineers to design hardware functionality at higher levels of abstraction.